EMC automates VMware root cause analysis

Posted on March 11, 2009

-- EMC today announced Smarts Server Manager, a new tool that identifies the locations of virtual machines, determines their relationships to other parts of the infrastructure, and automates root cause analysis in VMware environments.

The software uses behavioral modeling to understand the relationships between virtual servers, physical servers and the network to diagnose how and why system problems spread throughout the data center.

According to Jon Siegal, EMC's director of product marketing for resource management, customers that take a manual approach to root cause analysis are fighting a losing battle.

"Management needs to catch up now that the majority of enterprises have deployed virtualization in production. The rate of change in virtual server environments is an order of magnitude higher than in the physical world," says Siegal. "You can't manage the environment if you don't know what you have and where it is."

Smarts Server Manager is also capable of monitoring the health of Microsoft Cluster Services and Veritas Cluster Servers and identifying server performance problems by integrating with hardware monitoring suites from IBM, Dell, and Sun.

EMC prices Smarts Server Manager based on discovery and availability management per domain, as well as the number of devices under management. Pricing starts at $30,000 for existing EMC Smarts customers.